


bodyache

by songs



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 15:38:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5791114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songs/pseuds/songs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You like me,” Adam says, in a quiet voice. It’s neither cruel nor challenging— just a statement of fact. Blunt, rounded only by the stray lilt of his accent. This, Ronan decides, is not the Adam who scavenges for stones in Cabeswater, not the mythical boy with forests in his eyes and hands. This is the Adam Parrish of Aglionby, the Adam Parrish on the steps of the double-wide. Calm, guarded, matter-of-fact. Saying <i>You like me,</i> as though it were a sentence from a textbook, and not a pull for a confession.</p><p>Adam finally goes on, “Right?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	bodyache

“You like me,” Adam says, in a quiet voice. It’s neither cruel nor challenging— just a statement of fact. Blunt, rounded only by the stray lilt of his accent. This, Ronan decides, is not the Adam who scavenges for stones in Cabeswater, not the mythical boy with forests in his eyes and hands. This is the Adam Parrish of Aglionby, the Adam Parrish on the steps of the double-wide. Calm, guarded, matter-of-fact. Saying _You like me,_ as though it were a sentence from a textbook, and not a pull for a confession.

 

Adam finally goes on, “Right?”

 

Ronan studies him, then. The bony, slouched shoulders. The tense jaw. Adam is pale— _Noah-pale_ — freckles standing out like cinders against his skin. It’s all wrong. So, so wrong.

 

 _Does this hurt him?_ Ronan wonders. _Does this really hurt him?_

He clears his throat, very ready to say, _No,_ but what comes out it: “I can stop.”

 

Adam’s stare is unreadable. “You— what?”

 

“I,” Ronan says, careful with his words, “can stop.” _If you want me to._

 

Here, Adam’s unknowable expression falters, dips into mirth. “That easy, huh?”

 

Ronan doesn’t get it. Doesn’t get _Adam._ “What?”

 

“Like a switch,” Adam says. “I guess dropping me is pretty simple.”

 

“ _What?_ ” Ronan asks, bewildered. _You’ve got me all wrong, Parrish._ He could say that, could even make it soothing, gentle. But the anger is in the way. “What the hell are you talking about?”

 

“Nothing,” he says, but it sounds like _Everything._ He takes Ronan’s words from his mind: “You just. You’ve got it wrong, Ronan.”

 

The _Ronan_ does him in. “Parrish?”

 

“I,” Adam starts, stops. “You can’t. Like me, I mean. You don’t know what I’ll do.”

 

“Of course I don’t,” Ronan snaps. “I’m not here to fucking control you.”

 

“Then what?”

 

“Just—” Ronan’s voice dips. “ _You._ Being with you.”

 

Adam’s gaze darts to his hands— his beautiful, bone-jutting hands, lined with work and effort. Soft with earth— and _dreams_ , if Ronan is being presumptuous. And he is always being presumptuous.

 

But Adam never is. He’s staring at his palms like they’re something nightmarish— _here’s the smell of blood, still._ But Adam’s hands are clean, cleaner than Ronan’s will ever be. Strong enough to carry a universe of burden, yet still be gentle where it counts.

 

“What if you change your mind?” asks Adam. “You said it. You could stop anytime.”

 

“If you _told_ me to,” Ronan counters. “I’d do it.”

 

 _I’d do almost anything,_ he doesn’t say.

“What if I never tell you to?”

 

Ronan hisses, “Is this a fun game for you, Parrish?” He resists the urge to gnaw at his wristbands. “If you don’t tell me what you want, I can’t give you anything.”

 

Adam says, “I want so many things.”

 

“I know that,” Ronan says. “It’s what makes you _you_.”

 

“But I… don’t _know_ me.” Adam looks absolutely miserable. “What if I do something wrong? What if I can’t stop it?”

 

“Stop _what,_ Adam?”

 

“I’m going to kill him,” Adam whispers, “and you’re going to hate me for it.”

 

Ronan does not have to ask who _he_ is. There’s only one person that could leave Adam so windblown and shaken, by just the _thought_ of his absence.

 

“You wouldn’t,” Ronan says. “You _couldn’t_ hurt him. Who the hell gave you that idea?”

 

“Cabeswater,” Adam supplies. “The vision in the tree.”

 

“Fuck visions,” Ronan tells him. _Fuck dreams._ “They can’t come true unless you want them to.”

 

“I don’t,” Adam says, terrified. “Ronan, I’d _never_ —”

 

What comes next is a messy, mimicry of a kiss; Ronan surges forward, and Adam drops his guard, allowing him into his wispy, fitful space. It’s a gift. Adam Parrish is a fortress of a boy— wall after wall after wall, but Ronan has never minded such defenses, which remind him so much and so little of his own.

 

 _I like you. I could never hate you._ They seem like such stupid, petty things to say. So Ronan does not say them, and instead breathes in straight from Adam’s throat, licking between the pink seam of his mouth before pulling back, lips tingling, yearning.

 

“Parrish,” he says, voice wrecked. He grasps at one of Adam’s hands, then, and in a tepid, childlike motion, leans down to leave a kiss in his palm. It’s confession enough. He _hopes_ it’s confession enough. “ _Adam_.”

 

Adam doesn’t pull away. But he doesn’t meet Ronan’s eyes, either. “I didn’t tell you to stop,” he says, at length.

 

“I won’t,” Ronan tells him. This time, Adam seems to catch the promise there. A wistful, bout of emotion flickers over his face, but disappears before Ronan can attempt to decipher it. Then, Adam cranes his neck, pressing a furtive kiss along Ronan’s cheekbone, just below his lashes.

 

Very softly, he says, “ _Ronan_. Ronan, I don’t want to let go.”

 

Ronan sighs into the touch. “That’s okay,” he murmurs, equally gentle. His fingers tremble, coiling into the fabric of Adam’s shirt.“Whatever you want.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments always appreciated !!!!


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